


Summertime

by puppyeolie



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Childhood Friends, Depression, Established Relationship, Funerals, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Trauma, idk what tags to use, idk why i wrote this, taeyong is suicidal, there is a sad backstory, they are gay and sad, yuta helps taeyong cope, yuta is sad, yutae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27068365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puppyeolie/pseuds/puppyeolie
Summary: And if you stay, I would even wait all nightOr until my heart explodes
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Summertime

Yuta finds Taeyong by the bridge.

His feet dangerously dangling off the edge, his laces untied, Lee Taeyong waves when he sees Yuta. He leans in too far with a smiling face, steadies himself with a giggle and an _oops_ , pats the cold empty concrete beside him, and beckons Yuta with a nod and dark blank eyes.

Yuta sighs and plops himself down beside Taeyong. He drops both their backpacks with a dull thud.

Taeyong drags his bag towards himself, dramatically pulls out a black sharpie from among tons of crumbled sheets of paper, and lip gloss tubes, and tangled up earphones, and motions Yuta for his arm. Yuta understands what’s up, has sat through this routine too many times to question Taeyong’s motives anymore.

Yuta extends his right arm, and Taeyong bends down over it, nose scrunched up and tongue poking out, black sharpie in hand making calculated strokes across the taut skin of Yuta’s arm.

He smiles up at Yuta when he’s done, and immediately proceeds to repeat the process on his own arm. Yuta looks down at Taeyong’s handiwork:

_summertime_

He watches the black ink bleed into his skin, veiny branches running a short way before they disappear.

Taeyong’s handwriting is neat, always has been, and the words look pretty on Yuta’s arm.

There’s a little black heart at the end. Yuta smiles.

Taeyong shoves his newly inked arm into Yuta’s face when he's done; there’s a long sentence across his arm:

_i have died ten times already, in this part of town_

Taeyong smiles, his eyes still dark and blank.

\------------------------------

Taeyong climbs in through Yuta’s window past midnight.

He sits on the edge of Yuta’s bed, shivering. Yuta pulls in him.

Yuta had been staring up at the slowly rotating ceiling fan counting cracks on the wall, and there were monsters under Taeyong’s bed, there were monsters under Taeyong’s bed, there were monsters under Taeyong’s bed, he told Yuta with glistening eyes.

Taeyong falls asleep in Yuta’s arms, gently sobbing in his sleep.

Yuta thinks he’s been able to smell abandonment since he was six. On his mother’s shoes after her funeral, in his father’s house eleven years since, on the graffiti of a boy with wings by the pier, and always on Lee Taeyong, every day on Lee Taeyong.

Yuta frees his hands from Taeyong's and rummages around the mess on his bedside table. He finds the bottle of pills, pops two, and puts them in his bottom drawer so Taeyong doesn’t find them in the morning.

He brushes a stray strand of bleached blonde hair off Taeyong’s forehead. He falls asleep soon.

\------------------------------

When Yuta wakes up the next morning, Taeyong is poking his nose. They have a pillow fight with the two pillows and one plushie in Yuta’s bed.

Taeyong has bright eyes today. He empties out Yuta’s sparsely stocked fridge to cook breakfast. It’s almost grand. Yuta ruffles his hair as Taeyong giggles at his compliments. Taeyong pecks him on the lips.

It’s a nice morning. Yuta wonders how long it will last.

\------------------------------

The bell for the last class of the days rings out.

Yuta lights his second cigarette.

Taeyong has stopped crying. He sits against the dirty walls of the third-floor boys’ washroom. He rubs off his wet cheeks with a now grimy shirt sleeve and asks Yuta for a cigarette. Yuta throws him one.

Through the smoke, Yuta notices Taeyong’s eyes are blank again.

\------------------------------

Yuta does not remember much of his mother’s funeral. He remembers her looking pale and pretty in the casket, he remembers his father screaming about the flowers being all wrong, he remembers the constant itching on his neck: he had never worn a suit before, it was black and stiff, Yuta never wanted to wear one again.

Yuta remembers every bit of Mark Lee’s funeral. He lives it over and over again every night Taeyong skips the white picket fence between their houses and climbs into his room and his arms, and he lays awake till the sun rises, watching Taeyong sleep in the dark, afraid he’d slip away too.

The casket had been closed, _the face was too mangled_ , they said, _you can’t recognize him anymore_ , they whispered, _I can, I can, I can, I can_ , Taeyong screamed until his voice gave out.

Yuta’s first impression of Mark Lee’s face was that he looked nothing like Taeyong. He had asked Taeyong about it.

 _Siblings don’t always look alike, silly,_ Taeyong had told him.

Yuta had been embarrassed, cheeks red. Taeyong was eight too, why did he always have to sound so much wiser, Yuta had puffed his cheeks, complaining in his head. Taeyong had giggled and poked his puffed-up cheeks, and it had been alright again.

Yuta never got a last impression of Mark Lee’s face. He will forever be fourteen in his memory.

Mark had never had a favourite flower, not yet, so nobody could scream about getting the wrong flowers. They had gotten Taeyong’s favourite ones instead. Bluebells. _Don’t you think my funeral will look the same as Mark’s?_ , Taeyong had asked him one afternoon as he cleaned up the cuts on Taeyong’s wrists in the dingy alley behind the local pharmacy.

Yuta does not remember if the suit had been stiff. He only remembers Taeyong clutching on to him so hard he thought the suit would rip.

\------------------------------

Yuta walks home with Taeyong’s hand in his.

Taeyong is humming a tune from a nursery rhyme, pretending to count streetlights. His eyes are still blank.

Yuta invites him in when they reach his front door, promises to cook him dinner. Taeyong shakes his head, treads light steps to his own door and walks in. He doesn’t look back.

Taeyong needs to cry again, Yuta knows.

\------------------------------

Yuta sits in bed that night, counting the cigarettes he had left. He waits for Taeyong to climb through the window.

His eyes feel heavy at dawn.

Taeyong stumbles through the window, bluebells clutched in one hand, Yuta’s bottle of sleeping pills, empty, in another.

**Author's Note:**

> idk why i suddenly felt like writing this, i haven't even really ever shipped taeyong with yuta before but smolppstitsucker's yutae fic gave me too many of those damned feels, so here i am. the title is after my chemical romance's summertime, since the lyrics to my chemical romance's summertime inspired a few details in this fic. i hope people like it.


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